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Friday, April 24, 2009

How to start your PDF Publishing empire for only $50…

People keep asking me the question, “How do I get into the RPG publishing business?” and I keep saying, “Just do it.” And then people get either confused or upset. So I am going to break it down PIECE BY PIECE what you need to do to get started on you PDF publishing empire for only $50:

Find a writer or write it yourself: If you are not a good writer, then hire one. There are a lot of people out there who want to write. It is better to get some who is passionate about working with you then someone who does it for the money only. At this point, pay only ½ a cent up to 1 cent a word for your writers. You are poor and starting out so that is all you can afford. Just tell people the truth and more often they will be willing to work with you. At this rate you can spend $30 and get 3,000 to 6,000 words (roughly 6 to 12 pages finished). TOTAL SO FAR: $30

Editors: Forget them!!! You can afford them. Right now you are only just trying to get your name out there. TOTAL SO FAR: $30

Get some stock art: Forget getting a “real” artist, you don’t have the money in the budget for it. Go to RPGNow and get some of Shaman’s Stock Art. Why should you get Shaman’s Stock Art? First off it is cheap; for $8 you can get several (like 5 to 6) good pieces of art. Second it’s in color. Color artwork helps sell PDF products better. Third, you don’t have to use every piece of stock art in this product so you will save money for your next product. TOTAL SO FAR: $38

Do cheap layout: Find someone who will do layout work cheap. I personally can layout 10 pages a hour (meaning in is correctly designed and formatted and looks great) but on something for a starting publisher just do simple and clean (look at my True Arcane Story line for what I mean). Find someone to do it for $10. They will do the layout and convert it into a PDF for you. Hey it is not a lot of money, but this should not take longer than an hour to layout and for a guy who knows what he is doing (like me) it is like getting free money. TOTAL: $48

So you have $2 left over and you can go down to Wendy’s (or In-n-Out Burger if you are on the West Coast) and grab something to eat as a symbol of creating your first RPG PDF product. Congrats you are now a PDF publisher. Now you have to get your PDF online to sell. We will talk about that another time. Talk to you later…